A country of Europe and Asia, a soft kind of leather, made originally in Russia but now elsewhere, having a peculiar odor from being impregnated with an oil obtained from birch bark. It is much used in bookbinding, on account of its not being subject to mold, and being proof against insects, a former empire in eastern Europe and northern Asia created in the 14th century with Moscow as the capital; powerful in the 17th and 18th centuries under Peter the Great and Catherine the Great when Saint Petersburg was the capital; overthrown by revolution in 1917